Two of the most commonly used applications for delivering electronic messages to individuals and groups are electronic mail (email) and text messages. Email refers to the transmission of messages, which may include further messages and/or files as attachments, by computer from one person to another person or group of persons. Email provides expedient connectivity and fast communication between network users. If a person is either unavailable or unwilling to pick up a message immediately, the message is stored until that person can review the stored message at a later time. Email messages also provide a quick and easy way to package information such as sales reports, graphics, and other data for transfer to another user or group of users by simply attaching the information to the message. Business users increasingly rely on email messages to share ideas, transmit documents, schedule meetings, and perform a multitude of other everyday tasks.
Text messages are similar to email message in that they are text based and can be electronically sent from one user to a plurality of other users. Text messages such as Short Message Service (SMS) messages and Instant Messages (IM) use different applications and often times help facilitate real time communications whereas traditional email is a non-real time communication medium.
Emails in large corporations and other organizations are often times targeted to an audience in a specific location. Such emails may contain information specific to the targeted location. For example, some employees working in an organization and at a particular location may receive an email pertaining to a fire drill that will be conducted at that location on a specific date, or a message indicating that a parking lot near the location will be closed for a particular amount of time.
When associates within that organization from another location come to that targeted location they may desire to receive such emails, even though they do not have a permanent office at that location. Conversely, an associate that has a permanent office at the targeted location may be away on business or vacation. Under such circumstances the associate may not desire to receive such location specific emails.
One way to address this issue is for the “visiting associate” to ask someone at the relevant location to forward location-specific distribution list messages to them during their visit. This solution assumes that the visiting associate knows someone at the location who would be willing to perform this service and that the person to whom the request is made would remember to forward the relevant messages to the requestor.
Another solution would be for the visiting associate to request of the mail server administrator that they be added to the location-specific distribution list(s). This is problematic in that the administrator must manually add the user to the relevant list(s) and then remember to remove them when the visiting associate departs.
There is also prior art that detects the presence of mobile device users and broadcasts advertising from local stores to the user's mobile device when they are within a certain range of the local store. This solution has no concept of a pre-existing distribution list or the idea of automatically adding “visitor” entities to that pre-existing list.
Another possible solution is described in U.S. Patent Application No. 2002/0138580 to Al-Kazily et al., the entire contents of which are hereby incorporated herein by this reference. The Al-Kazily reference describes a locator system that allows messages already originally intended for a user to be directed to the most convenient receiving device for that user based on the user's location. The Al-Kazily reference does not however provide for adding the user to a location-specific message distribution list based on the user's presence activity.